One Quality Every Instructional Designer Should Possess

Written by Sonal Paul

“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.” – Milton Glaser

Design is an inseparable aspect of e-learning, and by design I am not talking only about the visuals facet. There is more to e-learning than just slides, colors or avatars that brighten up your screen. When talking about design in e-learning courses, we are talking about its instructional design. If you want your learner to say, “wow this course was great,” then you need to create instructional strategies that are wow worthy.

This post is not about the various strategies you can use in your e-learning course; it’s not about shortcuts or taking the easy way out. It’s about that one quality that enhances you as an instructional designer, so much so that creating wow-worthy courses becomes an effortless task. So are you ready to get better at your developing skills? Let’s Begin!

Write, Write and Write!

The foremost skill you need to boost is your writing skills. Being a good writer goes a long way to express ideas and concepts in your courses. Most people confuse good writing as being good at grammar, spellings or punctuations; while these aspects are necessary, they are not enough to make your learners go wow! A good instructional designer is a great writer who takes the most mundane topics and turns it into a magical learning experience that leaves a long-lasting impression or recall in your learner’s mind.

Writing is that one skill that covers A to Z of your course. For example:

Creating Outcomes: The first slide that a learner comes across is the one that has the course-learning objectives. Hence, it is imperative to write objectives that addresses the knowledge, attitude and skills of the learner. Now don’t just stick to bullets; instead innovate and come up with unique ways to write them. Have a look at this example to understand better.

Creating Stories: Writing stories to present your learning is the best way to drive your learning point home! Stories are not only a great way to grab the attention of the learner, but an excellent tool to create scenarios and situations to illustrate a concept. When you write well, your storytelling techniques are more than enough to engage your learner. Take a look at how good writing creates great stories and scenarios in the examples below.

Creating Activities: Writing or creating activities for e-learning courses is not an easy task, especially when you have to work with complex software simulations. The most challenging part of being an instructional designer is writing content for instruction in areas where there is little or no scope for writing. Although this may be hard, you can still incorporate writing skills in the following ways: (a) by using conversational audio (b) by using characters to instruct steps to the learners. Here are a few examples of writing for activities.

With this one quality in your arsenal, you can take on the hardest subject matter and create elements that will leave your learners saying wow by the time they complete the course. How important do you think writing is to instructional design? Comment below and share your thoughts!

Originally published September 16 201511/04/2015, updated February 18 2018

About CommLab India

CommLab India addresses the learning and development needs of major organizations through its custom and rapid e-learning solutions, translations and mobile learning services. Since 2000, we have been offering technology-enabled solutions to accelerate workforce performance.

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